A wide variety of waste delivery systems are known in the art. Some of such systems may include steps to remove and/or isolate pollutants, such as hazardous laboratory waste, from waste materials to be delivered to a public sewage system and then into the natural environment, or steps for the treatment of such pollutants within the system to neutralize the same before delivery into a public sewage system and then into the natural environment. Thus, many of the known systems involve relatively sophisticated and complex operational steps and, as well, sophisticated and complex apparatus for accomplishing the same. Moreover, in recent years, the necessity of cleaning up the natural environment has resulted in the enactment of environmental legislation on the part of State and Federal Governments to enhance the quality of the environment by reducing and/or eliminating adverse environmental activities and has resulted in the exertion of pressures on industrial operators in order to not only protect the natural environment but also to protect the public against the adverse effects of industrial pollution and, thus, increase the quality of life for the public in general.
The enactment of environmentally protective laws, including the enforcement of the same by the imposition of severe penalties, has brought about the development of a substantial body of environment enhancing and protecting technology. Some typical examples of recent, relatively simple devices of such technology include U.S. Pat. No. 5,438,713 of Aug. 8, 1995, which discloses a prefabricated bathroom module for installation onto a deck of a marine vessel; U.S. Pat. No. 5,413,705 of May 5, 1995, for a filterless drain separator which discloses structure, such as a centripetal separator, which allows separation of liquid and solids or particulate matter and permits the liquid to pass through and out of the drain while retaining the solids or particulate matter for removal and disposal; U.S. Pat. No. 5,388,288 of Feb. 14, 1995, which discloses a plumbing fitting which serves both as a test closure and a trap bushing for a T-fitting; U.S. Pat. No. 5,333,327 of Aug. 2, 1994, dealing with an apparatus for opening and closing a drain and showing a mechanism for remotely opening and closing a drain of a basin with a flexible rod moving through a non-linear tube; U.S. Pat. No. 5,325,549 of Jul. 5, 1994, which discloses a trap fitting assembly for mounting in flammable floors which prevents the spread of smoke and fire through a floor and ceiling; U.S. Pat. No. 5,267,361 of Dec. 7, 1993, which discloses a drain trap having an L-shaped inlet tube, a cap, a vertical discharge tube and a garbage blocking member; U.S. Pat. No. 5,255,402 of Oct. 26, 1993, which discloses a trap for a sink, or the like, having an easily removable bottom portion which permits the trap to be cleaned and lost articles removed; U.S. Pat. No. 5,249,398 of Oct. 5, 1993, which discloses a cesspool for handling waste water and which is provided with a drainage system having two separate odor locks which prevent the escape of odorless gas from the system through the cesspool; U.S. Pat. No. 5,236,137 of Aug. 17, 1993, which discloses an apparatus and method for garbage disposal cleaning; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,203,369 of Apr. 20, 1993, which discloses a sink trap having a generally semi-global main chamber, a shallow water chamber, a plurality of baffles for supporting the water chamber in the main chamber in an inwardly spaced relation and defining a plurality of volute passageways between the main and water chambers, and a cap detachably secured to the upper edge of the main chamber and an inlet pipe extending axially downwardly through the cap into the water chamber to lead drainage into the water chamber and discharging the drainage by overflowing the water chamber to flow through the volute passageways forming a turbulent liquid flow along a drainage pipe line to prevent the drainage pipe line from becoming choked with impassable matter.
While the above-mentioned Patents are exemplative of a variety of technological developments in some of the simpler and more fundamental areas of developments of environmentally beneficial systems, methods and apparatus and appear to provide answers to the various problems they were developed to overcome, they simply do not recognize the problem of the disposition of waste from research laboratory operations. This is especially so when the disposition, whether it be inadvertent or otherwise, of such laboratory wastes is encountered when cleaning laboratory equipment for further use during normal laboratory research operations.
In many chemical research laboratories in use today, a wide variety of hazardous materials are employed as initial reactants, or such hazardous material are generated as a result of experimental processes undertaken in connection with research activities. Moreover, many such materials may not only be hazardous to the environment and to humans from a health viewpoint, but even highly toxic to the extent that they cause death in humans, animals and plant life. Furthermore, while established operating standards of safety result in the disposition of most of such materials, the possibility of the existence of residues thereof in the laboratory equipment employed therewith during research activities must be taken into consideration when cleaning such equipment in the laboratory sinks, since introduction of such materials into the public sewage system, inadvertently or otherwise, may easily occur with consequent contamination of the public sewage system and the exterior environment. There exists, therefore, a need for providing a system and an apparatus which overcomes this problem. The present invention fulfills this need.